TANYA VREBOSCH - VOTES HER CONSCIENCE

About Tanya

- Tanya was born in Corbeil and has lived in North Bay since she was 18

- She’s always had strong roots in the city, graduating from St. Joseph Scollard Hall and then Canadore College after that

- Tanya’s been a hard worker since she was young, working every job from A-Z (literally, she’s been everything from an Administrative Assistant to a Zamboni Driver)

- Her drive to help others and to give back has led her to significant involvement with LIPI, the Santa Fund, and her career as a Case Manager at Ontario Works

- Tanya has served on city council for the last 11 years where she’s a proven fighter and known for getting things done.

- The only thing that pulled her away from council for any length of time was childbirth, and even that didn’t keep her away for long.

- She has two beautiful young children in five-year old Sydney and 6-month old Danielle (Dani), and is proud to raise them with her better half, Dan Nogueira

- Her parents are Bill and Gisele Vrebosch. She has 3 siblings, Lisa, Louise and Billy.

- When Tanya is making decisions on council, she understands the importance of making sure North Bay is a great place for families and that she’s inspired to make sure her children can grow up proud of their community

- Giving broad promises that she can’t be held accountable to isn’t her way – it’s not the way her parents raised her and it’s not the way she carries herself through life

Experience

- 11 years of municipal experience with the City of North Bay

- She was elected 11th out of 17 candidates in the 2006 Municipal Election. In February of 2008, she was sworn in as the youngest member of North Bay City Council (at the time).

- She is the current Chair of Engineering, Public Works and Environmental Services. She sits on the Waste Resource Liaison Committee, Cassellholme, Heritage North Bay, and the Nipissing Parry Sound District Health Unit.

- Tanya has served as Chair of Engineering and Public Works, Deputy Mayor, Budget Chief, and Chair of General Government at different points throughout her time on City Council

- She has perviously sat on the General Government Committee, Board Member with the Capitol Centre, the North Bay Public Library, the Planning Advisory Committee, the Concerned CItizens of North Bay and Area Committee and the North Bay police Services Board.

- Her previous work experience in economic development, coupled with her education in recreation and leisure services along with her current experience with social services gives her a well rounded approach when making her decisions.

Political Hot Topics

Economic Development

I don’t make promises other than that I will work hard for you and will be honest. How many of us would be millionaires if they got a dime every time a local politician promised to bring jobs, youth and prosperity back to the city? How many of us would be millionaires if they actually fulfilled those promises? I would like to help match the skills of our workers to the jobs offered by our businesses.

As your representative, I will push to have the City come to the table to partner with local agencies such as the Labour Market Group, the Chamber of Commerce, DNSSAB, YES Employment and any other group that would add value to create a city wide job matching database using existing resources.

If we can support our existing businesses with a healthy stock of labour then we will hopefully see growth and expansion. The saying is true “there are jobs without people and people without jobs.” We need to enhance our labour pool with skilled individuals. We can do this with the job matching program and partnering with our post-secondary institutions to help us fill the training gaps.

Infrastructure

I am a strong advocate for investing and maintaining our infrastructure.

The investments that we’ve continued to make over the years have saved us money. We are investing in fixing it properly and maintaining it rather than putting a band-aid on it or waiting until it’s past the point of repair and needs full reconstruction.

Arts, Culture and Heritage

I have been a strong advocate during the budget sessions for making arts and culture a line item. This term we saw Council support Discovery North Bay Museum and Creative Industries.

I believe that if the city wants to support arts, culture and heritage, then we need to DO IT. Enough of giving random amounts from the reserves, if you believe it in, make it a line item and support it.

We have the only live performing arts centre north of Barrie and south of Thunder Bay. This is something we should be proud of and continue to support.

With existing groups and committees such as the Municipal Heritage Committee, we are able to preserve North Bay's history. This is extremely important as a lot of this history is undocumented and preserved in the minds of our citizens. As we lose some of our older population, we will lose our history if we don't protect it.

Quality of Life

We have a quality of life in North Bay that is second to none.

With two beautiful lakes, public beaches, accessible playgrounds, hiking trails, waterfalls, bike paths, a great public library, two post secondary institutions, a new hospital, beautification from the Heritage Gardeners, a Famer's Market ,Gallery Hops and so much more. We are the envy of southern Ontarians.

Within 15 minutes you can be from one end of town to the other.

Our "traffic jams" rarely last longer than 5-10 minutes.

You can walk, bike or rollerblade across town or to one of our beautiful beaches.

Quality of Life is an integral part of economic development. When a business or potential employee is looking to relocate to North Bay, one of the first things that they look at is what we have to offer them and their families.

Tourism

Tourism through events hosting, sports and conferences is a valubale tool and an economic driver to the City of North Bay. Tourism, however, has been under promoted and under valued. We need to support general tourism as well as sports tourism. A wise man once told me that with sports tourism, people have to come here to to particpate in the sporting event. With a vacation, they have a choice on where they will vacation and spend their money.

Environment

- I was the polical champion for the mattress recycling program. This program, brought forward to Council by a group of young girls on the Lego Robotics team, has seen us divert over 6,000 mattresses from our landfill. I've also been working on a partnership with a local community group to see if we can assist citizens with reducing illegal dumping, making it more accessible to dispose of your mattress and salvaging mattresses where possible.

I am an advocate of forward thinking when it comes to creating bike lanes when we are doing infrastructure improvements, where it makes sense. We will see the beginning of this on Gormanville Road.